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A one‑volume collection of the prose and poetry of eighteenth‑century Britainldquo;s pre‑eminent lexicographer, critic, biographer, and poet Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was eighteenth‑century Britain’s pre‑eminent man of letters, and his influence endures to this day. He excelled as a moral and literary critic, biographer, lexicographer, and poet. This anthology, designed to make Johnson’s works fully accessible to students and general readers, draws its texts from the definitive Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. In most cases, texts are included in full rather than excerpted. The anthology includes many essays from The Rambler and other periodicals; Rasselas; the prefaces to Johnson’s Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare; the complete Lives of Cowley, Milton, Pope, Savage, and Gray, as well as generous selections from A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Some parts are arranged thematically, allowing readers to focus on such topics as religion, marriage, war, and literature. The anthology includes a biographical introduction, and its ample annotation updates and enlarges the commentary in the Yale Edition.

Robert DeMaria, Jr., is the Henry Noble MacCracken Professor of English at Vassar College. Stephen Fix is the Robert G. Scott ’68 Professor of English at Williams College. Howard D. Weinbrot is the Ricardo Quintana Professor of English and William Freeman Vilas Research Professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin‑Madison.